Long Beach State has finished with the best record in the Big West in each of the past three regular seasons.
The Beach finally have a conference championship trophy to show for it.
Clarke Godbold, the tournament’s most valuable player, led a trio of skilled pin hitters with 17 kills and the No. 1-seeded Beach punched a ticket they already had to the NCAA Tournament with a 25-23, 21-25, 25-16, 25-15 win over No. 2 seed UC Irvine to win the Outrigger Big West Men’s Volleyball Championship on Saturday night.
Sotris Siapanis added 15 kids and 11 digs while hitting .500 and Skyler Varga chipped in 11 kills for the Beach (25-2), whose only loss to a conference opponent came last weekend when they were swept by the Anteaters.
They came back to sweep UCI the next night to earn the No. 1 seed in this tournament, where they dropped just two sets.
“You can learn as much from a win as you can from a loss, and I think that’s really, really true. But deep down in your competitive guts, you can’t get the same emotion, the same anger, the same resolve, the same attention to detail and urgency as you get when you lose a match sometimes,” Long Beach State coach Alan Knipe said. “What it did is it ignited a little inner competitor in us, and that has been really good for us.”
A SimpliFi Arena at Stan Sheriff Center crowd of 2,334, some of whom who were still wearing green in support of Hawai‘i, which was eliminated in the semifinals on Friday night by UC Irvine, seemed to favor the Anteaters over the Beach.
UCI dropped to 19-10 overall but is still expected to earn one of the two at-large berths to the NCAA Tournament announced this morning, with defending champion UCLA getting the other bid.
“I’ve got to believe that we’re in a good position,” UC Irvine coach David Kniffin said. “If we’re playing again in two weeks, I think we can learn a lot in two weeks, we can get a lot better. For as good as we are, it’s a pretty new composition of players on the court. I don’t know we are anywhere near where we could be, so if given that opportunity in two weeks, I think we can only get better.”
Long Beach State is 26-4 in BWC games in the past three seasons but came up short in the previous two tournaments, losing to UC Irvine in the semifinals in 2023 and to Hawai‘i in the final in ’22.
The Beach had won a national title more recently than a Big West championship, finishing off back-to-back NCAA Championship victories in 2018 and ’19, with their last conference title coming in ’18.
The Beach will host the NCAA Championships on May 2-4 inside the Walter Pyramid.
“We have a great culture and a great fan base and we know that the LB fans will be there and show support,” Godbold said. “We can’t wait to get back there for sure.”
Long Beach State middle blocker DiAeris McRaven, a Moanalua alumnus who transferred from Orange Coast College, had four kills and four blocks against UCI.
Long Beach State held a large advantage at the net, outblocking UC Irvine 11.5-3.5.
UC Irvine junior Hilir Henno was held to 15 kills in four sets after putting down 24 in Friday’s semifinal sweep of UH.
“That might have been one of the best performances I have ever seen in a conference tournament ever,” Knipe said. “I thought our guys did a good job of prepping for that.”
The Beach took the first set on a net violation by UC Irvine after the Anteaters had taken a 19-16 lead.
A service error by Henno and back-to-back blocks by the Beach, who had 4.5 in the opening set, allowed Long Beach to tie the score at 19-all.
Simon Torwie, the nation’s leading blocker, was in on three of those blocks and gave the Beach the lead with a kill.
William D’Arcy tied it back up with a kill, but the Anteaters served out and never managed to tie it again.
The Beach led 20-19 in the second set when the Anteaters closed on a 6-1 run to tie the match at one set apiece.
Henno put down three straight kills to put UCI ahead 22-20 and Maxim Grigoriev served back-to-back aces for set point.
Grigoriev served out on the next point, but it was no problem, as Henno’s two-handed push kill bounced multiple times off the block and fell to the floor on the Long Bech State side to end it.
The Beach closed out the match in dominant fashion over the last two sets, outscoring the Anteaters by a combined 19 points.
Varga, Siapanis and Godbold all had three kills in the fourth set, with setter Aidan Knipe spreading around his 10 assists to his quality pin hitters.
Knipe, who finished with a match-high 43 assists and eight digs, ran the offense to its best output in the final set, as Long Beach hit .524, with Godbold closing out the match with a thunderous kill down the middle.
“We tried to stay really present in the moment of not getting too far ahead for next week,” Alan Knipe said. “I thought our guys were incredibly good about it, especially the response from Friday to Saturday night.”
